Anyone out there with experience of welsh medium education at primary?

[barmouthdreams]

Hullo, we are looking at welsh medium education for our son. We are moving from scotland and were learning gaelic and considering gaelic medium education.
The WME school near to a house we have on offer on, has 50% of pupils from welsh speaking homes - and it is a a big school - ( I have another thread on school size). I thought this may mean that DS would get left behind if his language skills weren't as good as his peers. In Scotland most kids at gaelic medium don't come from gaelic speaking homes so the school is well geared up to deal with children who can't really speak gaelic when they enter school. Perhaps this wouldn't be the case at a school where so many kids must be fluent already? Any thoughts? (we as parents would be learning welsh but obviously it would be a slow process).

From your user name I don't think I'm a million miles away from you! What used to happen (and I believe it still does) is that for a term, non Welsh speaking children were sent to the local Language Unit to bring them up to speed, and it worked very effectively. You don't mention the age of your DC however, if they join at the beginning of school you will be surprised how quickly thy pick up Welsh, and in turn how quickly you will find yourself using some of the terms. There were also classes specifically for parents to learn Welsh alongside their children.

Thanks Lucy - my user name actually reflects my childhood holidays to barmouth. A week in a caravan in Barmouth. I loved it! Very happy memories! I grew up in Shropshire.
We are moving to Cardiff now.

My son is 4 btw, so will be starting at the very beginning of school.

How old is he? I only know of friends' kids who go to Welsh school, but they started in reception so they picked it up gradually rather than being thrown in the deep end

Ah, x post :)

Should be fine then, there will be a lot of kids who don't speak Welsh (even if it's 50%, that's still 50% who don't)

That's true Beyond : )

They're quite easy going with use of English lower down in the school. There's not gonna be a situation where eg he needs to use the toilet and they won't let him go unless he asks in Welsh. :)

: )

It sounds like they're well used to pupils who don't speak Welsh already if only 50% of the intake are Welsh speakers already. And as a big school, there will be lots of them in the 50% of non-Welsh speakers starting.